A Yiddish word referring to a walled section of a city in which Jews were required to live.This was part of the Nazi regime’s “Final Solution” to the Jewish question.

Concentration Camps

In German, Konzentrationslager. Prison camps constructed to hold Jews, Gypsies, political and religious opponents, resisters, homosexuals, and other Germans considered "enemies of the state."

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Anti-Semitism

Prejudices toward Jews or discrimination against them.

Extermination Camps

In German, Vernichtungslager. Nazi camps, equipped with gassing facilities, for mass murder of Jews. Located in Poland at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek-Lublin, Sobibor, and Treblinka. Up to 2,700,000 Jews were murdered at these six camps, as were tens of thousands of Gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war, Poles, and others.

Aryan

Originally, a term for peoples speaking the languages of Europe and India. Twisted by Nazis, who viewed those of Germanic background as the best examples of "superior"

Death Marches

At the end of the war when it became obvious that the German army was trapped between the Soviets to the east and the advancing Allied troops from the west, the Nazis, in an attempt to prevent the liberation of camp inmates, forced them to march westward.Thousands died

Final Solution

Nazi code for physical destruction of European Jews.

Jewish Council

In German, Judenrat. Group of Jewish leaders established on Nazi orders in German-occupied towns and cities

Genocide

Deliberate, systematic destruction of a racial, cultural, or political group.

Death Camp

Term widely used to describe both extermination camps, such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka, where people were murdered in assembly-line style by gassing, and concentration camps such as Bergen-Belsen and Dachau, without gas chambers but where thousands were killed by starvation, disease, and maltreatment.

Nazi

Short term for National Socialist German Workers Party, a right-wing, nationalistic, and antisemitic political party formed in 1919 and headed by Adolf Hitler from 1921 to 1945.

“Night of broken glass” on November 9th, 1938.An event against German Jews orchestrated by the Gestapo in retaliation for the assassination of a minor German embassy official in Paris by a 17 year old Jewish youth.7,500 businesses and 101 synagogues were destroyed and many people were killed, arrested or sent to camps.This event is considered the beginning of the Holocaust.

Nuremberg

A city in Germany where the Reichstag met in 1935 to develop laws.A decade later, an International Military Tribunal convened there to hold trials of Nazis accused of War Crimes.

Yad Vashem

A museum in Jerusalem dedicated to the memory of Holocaust victims.

Propaganda

Biased information designed to shape public opinion and behavior

SS

In German, Schutzstaffel. Protection Squad. Units formed in 1925 as Hitler's personal bodyguard. They were later built into a giant organization by Heinrich Himmler. It provided staff for police, camp guards, and military units serving with the German army.

Wannsee Conference

On Jan. 20, 1942, it was decided and made official Nazi policy that the total annihilation of European Jews was the only rational means of a “final solution” to the Jewish Question.

Sonderkommando

German word for "special squad." In the context of extermination camps, it refers to units of Jewish prisoners forced to take away bodies of gassed inmates to be cremated and to remove gold fillings and hair.

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